


Five Times Harold McCall Hurt Someone (And One Time He Meant To)

by ashurbadaktu



Series: Those Who Cannot Remember The Past [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Near Death Experience, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Relationship(s), Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-22
Updated: 2012-10-22
Packaged: 2017-11-16 20:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashurbadaktu/pseuds/ashurbadaktu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In each of us, two natures are at war -- the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose --- what we want most to be, we are." - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Harold McCall Hurt Someone (And One Time He Meant To)

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by Ony (thedisorderly) for the most part, though any mistakes near the end are entirely my fault ^_^;

When his parents were alive, the full moon was wonderful. 

Every month, his father would come back from the market with a fresh chicken, season it, then roast it the night of the full moon as a treat for his wife and son. Harry and his mother would split the chicken right down the middle, one wing and one leg each, and devour it to take some of the edge off of the hunger that the moon brought with it. Once dinner was done, his father would smile and kiss them both before heading to bed while his mother led him out back towards the forest. There, they'd sit and talk for a while: Harry usually told his mother about his day at school while she would stroke his hair and kiss his cheek and tell him about all the interesting people who'd visited her that day. She worked at the little restaurant at the edge of the woods, the only place to eat anywhere on the long and twisting road through the endless trees. There were lots of different people there for lots of different reasons and Harry loved her stories, every one, because she'd do the voices and sometimes she'd cuddle him up on her lap even when he was starting to get too big for it.. 

Then, when the moon was finally high and they both were too excited to talk or sit, her face would change and his would change and they'd start running through the trees. It was just the two of them, something they shared together with no one else. They'd run and run and sometimes they'd hunt a rabbit or a fox before coming home but they always managed to come home before sunrise and fall onto the couch together in a big sloppy mess which was okay because his father always put the tarp on the couch for them for just that reason. 

The first full moon after his parents were gone was another story entirely.

He'd had a few weeks to mourn before the weight of the moon dropped onto him as well. There was unfamiliar Chinese food and a television show or two, then his aunt Tay gave him a watery smile and plucked his hand from the table to pull him up.

"Aunt Tay?"

She wouldn't look him in the eyes, bony hands curling tightly around his own. He knew what that meant, knew it meant that she was afraid, and he could do the math to figure out that she was afraid of him of all things. Any other night, he might have just gone along with her but tonight was the moon and he was already on the edge.

"Aunt Tay, where are we-- what are you doing?"

Aunt Tay, his father's sister, tugged him more insistently. She was a large woman, as his father had been a large man, and he went along with it because he wasn't sure if it would be worse to pull back or not. She looked back just once as she started up the stairs and Harry knew absolutely knew, that she was terrified.

"Your father told me about this, Harry. I-I didn't believe him, I wasn't sure he wasn't kidding with me, my brother's always kidded with me, but I've read that letter of his, and I've seen... I saw at the funeral, don't think I didn't notice. And he told me, he told me if I didn't think you were under control..."

Which was when his eye caught on what was through the open attic door. The dull shine of the chains in the moonlight immediately shot warning signals through him and he pulled back, not caring that he might fall down the stairs if it meant getting away. His Aunt seemed to have planned for that, though, because she only clung tighter.

"Maybe after a time or two, you can do it without the chains, but you're not stable now, Harry, you've been anxious for a week and I just... I can't chance it."

He made an animal noise and tried to yank his arm out, away, run. He wasn't thinking about tomorrow, about the fact that there wasn't a massive forest to disappear into here or someone to run and hunt with. He just had to get away from the chains. 

"Stop acting like a baby!" she snapped, fear and anger mixing dangerously in her voice.

He couldn't even speak; he was too panicked. The idea of being chained down, stuck inside, _caged_ like some kind of monster... the panic ignited the pain of his loss and he yanked back _hard_ , letting his claws fly free. 

Aunt Tay screamed as the line of bright red appeared along her arm and she put her hand against the top of the wound where the blood seemed to be flowing the hardest. Harry stared at it for just a moment, the scream raking across his ears and the smell of blood making his muscles shake. Then, vision red and frantic, he ran. He ran and ran and ran until daybreak, when, exhausted, he walked home.

Her arm needed 36 stitches. She couldn't look at him for a week. 

And every moon after that, he did it chained.

\-----

"You lost your job _again_?"

Melissa had an amazing ability to get down to the brass tacks and usually he appreciated it, but right now he needed her to shut up and let him calm down.

"I... I quit. I couldn't stay there anymore, Mel, it was driving me nuts."

"What, Harry? What was so bad that you couldn't just... just suck it up and remember that you have a family? I'm working all the shifts that I can but I can't support the three of us on my own!"

Words. Melissa always had the best words, the most amazing, poignant words. Normally, her words were one of the things he loved about her, the way she could turn a joke or make his heart feel heavy in all the best ways. But when she was angry, when she wanted to hurt him, she could be more devastating than anything else. He'd known that when he asked her to marry him, known it when they had their son, but right now, when he was already beating up on himself enough, it was everything he didn't need.

He could feel his teeth lengthening in his mouth, feel the claws at the ends of his fingers, and he didn't know if he could keep himself under control if she said anything else. It was too close, too close to the moon and too soon after the miserable day he'd had.

"Are you going to say anything?"

He breathed in and out, tried to think of the good things, the bright points in his life. Unfortunately, the only ones he could bring up were Melissa and Scott and the knowledge of having failed them, again, made them burn so brightly they only added to the pain. He grit his teeth and tried to get his mind around words, around things that weren't a growl or... or something stupid--

"I'm... trying."

" _Trying_? Trying to lose every chance for decent employment in town?"

"No!" he snapped, looking up, at her and he knew from the moment that he saw her that his eyes were not the right color. She startled and stumbled back, confused and scared and his heart plummeted as he saw that look. Panicking, he shook his head and tried to calm down, think, and when he looked back at her, she was angry again. And wary.

Good. He was under control again.

"T-then what, Harry? What're you trying?"

"I'm--" he didn't even know. He'd been trying to ignore it. No, that wasn't right. He'd been trying to deal with it while he found enough evidence to get the old bastard put away for what he was doing. But there'd been one comment too many, one hand in the wrong place on Margaret who had a kid like he did, who couldn't quit either, and he'd just... he'd been so angry and then his fist had been in the old man's face and that was job number four down the drain with no one helped at all. 'Quit' sounded a lot better than 'fired with a chance of jail time', though, so he'd gone with quit.

Some of that must have shown on his face, because Melissa's anger cooled somewhat and she was stepping towards him, her hand settling on his cheek. 

"Harry, we can't... we can't do this. We can't afford this. I know... I know you have some issues with authority, I get that, I had my own poetry beatnik stage too, remember?" and he couldn't help but smile at the memory of Melissa, his Melissa, trying to be stoic and disaffected. It broke the mood a little, had him leaning into her to breathe in her scent and center himself. Her hand went into his with a little hitch and he squeezed tight, 

"I promise I'm trying, Mel."

She didn't say anything else for a minute, which he was so very grateful for, before she pulled away. His nose twitched as she did, smelling-- smelling blood. He looked at Melissa, who appeared to be just fine until he noticed that her hand was clenched tight into a fist even as she glanced at the door.

"I think I heard the monitor. I've got to go feed Scott. We'll... we'll look for something in the papers after dinner, all right?"

One more look, sad, a little wary, and she was gone, his eyes drawn now to the floor, or rather to the tiny drops of blood that had splattered there. Now that she was no longer taking up his full attention, he looked down at his own hands to see that they were still full of claws, three of them reddened with blood. He hadn't meant to- he'd never-

God, what the hell was he going to do?

\-----

"Come on, Scotty. You can do it."

His son, six years old, looked back at him dubiously from across the log. They were spending the day out in the Preserve, hiking, just the two of them. It had been slow going since Scott kept having to take breaks, but Harold was hoping the boy would at least enjoy the time with his own father. Even if his father was getting frustrated by the pace.

"I dunno, dad. It's kinda wet."

"Little boys like wet," he said with a deep sigh, wondering (not for the first time) where he'd gone wrong. He'd spent more than one lonely night in the attic when he was younger telling himself that one day, he'd have a kid of his own, cook him chicken, run with him under the moon. When Scott had been born, it had been the beginning of that dream. Now, though, it was starting to feel like a nightmare. His son… God, his son. His son who was still on the other side of the creek.

"Scott, just… just start walking. The worst that can happen is you fall in the water."

Scott stared down beneath the log and quirked his lips back and forth. His eyes were on the rocks that were in the water. Harold had to give him that: his son was no dummy. Scott took after his mother in all the best ways. Unfortunately, one of them was a tendency to question, and very often when it was the most inconvenient.

"Scotty, just try. For me?"

Those were the magic words, and he knew it, and he used it because he needed his son to try. To dare. To push himself so that hopefully, one day… 

One day.

Scott straightened his shoulders and put his head up and carefully put the toe of his boot on the edge of the log. It rocked just a little between the stones before settling and that got the boy's confidence up enough to put both feet on the log. It was Scott's turn to wobble now as he adjusted to the rounded surface but, like the log, he got his bearings soon enough. Harold offered him a proud smile and he smiled right back, happy that he was happy.

"Now, it's easy. It's just one foot in front of the other. You can do it, champ. Come on."

Scott hesitated a moment as he looked at the log before doing what he was told, stepping forward with one foot, then the other, pausing every few seconds to keep himself balanced. He offered his father another grin, nodded firmly as if to say 'look, I'm doing it!', and kept going until he reached the half-way point. The log was imperfect, cracked a little in a few places, and Scott eyed it cautiously to figure out where to step.

"Stay away from the edges of the crack and you'll be fine. Come on, kiddo."

Scott frowned and took a deep breath, obviously nervous, but the breath caught, his chest jumping at the difficulty. Pain crossed his features then and Harold took a few steps closer before stopping as Scott struggled to breath regularly atop the broken log. His foot shifted after one of the hiccups, landing on a patch of moss. It slipped past it, down towards the dip in the creek and Scott gave out a yelp of pain as he dropped into the log knee first and his hands scrabbled for something to hold onto to keep himself from falling over the edge. 

Harold shot forward then, reaching out to catch his son before he hit the rocks and crashed into the water but the force of Scott's weight nearly sent them both there as the little boy struggled to breathe through his panic. Hating it, hating everything, terrified out of his mind, Harold scrambled to pull the inhaler from out of his pocket to use on his son but in his rush, almost managed to send it flying down the creek. Fingers shaking, the mouth piece cover did that anyway as he flicked it off and pressed the thing into the boy's mouth. Tiny hands, Scott's hands, so used to this, wrapped around his own and pushed the metal cartridge down to send the medicine into his lungs.

Three puffs and he could hear Scott breathing normally again, normally other than the slight hiccup of oncoming tears. Looking down, he could see that Scott's knee had been scraped badly enough to draw blood and Harold let out a short curse as he pulled his son from the creek and put him down on the leaves.

Conflicting emotions swirled around in Harold's head as they always did at times like this, making him feel simultaneously like the world's worst parent and like he just happened to have gotten not the worst son in the world, but wrong one. This tiny, fragile little body that could barely take in oxygen properly couldn't be his son, shouldn't be his son, except that he was and Harold's mind ran rampant with what could have happened to Scott if he hadn't caught him in time and none of it was helping him calm down. 

Scott's face was pinched tight in pain, but he had to give the boy credit: he wasn't crying. The tears were in his eyes, gathering there and falling down his cheeks, but he grit his teeth and breathed as well he could, and didn't scream. It made him proud in a way, the only way he could be for the moment.

"Come on, Scotty," he said as he picked up the boy. Scott didn't fuss then, or when his father took the inhaler from him and stashed it in his jacket again. Harold hated the stupid thing, thought it was a crutch that was probably making him worse, getting his body used to chemicals instead of letting his proper healing abilities manifest. Understandably, a part of him hated himself for giving the thing to him, but most of him was just glad that his son was safe and breathing properly again. Most of him. 

"Come on, let's get you back to the car and all cleaned up."

\-----

"I'm sorry, Mr. McCall, but I can't let him try out."

"What do you mean, he can't try out? It's _baseball_ , for Chrissakes!" he snapped, glaring at the coach at first before turning back to look at his son. Nine years old, dressed in a long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, Scott looked like the last thing he wanted was a fuss, but the second to last thing he wanted was probably to try out for the baseball team. It was already obvious that no one wanted him there; if he tried out, they'd just be upset that he'd wasted their time.

"Yes, and his file is very clear: Scott McCall is not cleared for extracurricular sports," the coach explained with a scowl, his eyes flicking from his father to Scott and back. He looked less than impressed with Harold and somewhat sorry for Scott, which Scott didn't know how to interpret. "He's not even supposed to participate in gym class, though the nurse says he's been in six times this semester for trying."

Harold was actually somewhat proud of that. It'd taken a little bit of a push, but his son had started taking the kind of risks and pushing himself the way he knew he should. Harold had been disappointed that the boy still didn't seem to show any signs of his heritage, but his mother had told him that children could come to it later in life.

She'd also told him that they might not come to it at all, but he didn't like to think about that.

"So you want me to take him home? Not even let him try out?" 

"Personally," the coach said with deep disapproval in his voice and his features, "I wish you hadn't brought him here to begin with. Do you know how embarrassing this kind of thing is for a kid?"

Scott squirmed a little, because he was pretty damn aware of how embarrassing it was when your dad wants you to do something that you really really not even trying your best helps _can't_ do. The other kids were also aware, because even though the coach had tried to keep his voice down, Scott could hear a couple of snickers.

He could also hear the warning growl from his father and stepped back.

Scott wasn't the only one who could hear the snickers. Harold could hear them, and the shift in his son's heartbeat, the scent of his shame and frustration melting into the pungent tang of his own. He'd been captain of the basketball team, MVP of the town's traveling baseball team, and he'd even dabbled in lacrosse the last year of high school when they'd been starting the team. Sports had been his life as a child, his lifeline, and the idea that this asshole wouldn't even let his son _try_...

Scott flew back as the coach did, but for vastly different reasons. The little boy knew to stay clear when his father was growling; the coach was not so wise and his movement came directly from Harold McCall's fist smashing into his jaw. The dugout exploded with the noise of small children, some of them excited, others laughing, and a few decent souls scrambling out to try and help the coach. The man had been knocked a decent way away and his nose was already gushing blood, which made Scott feel more than a little terrible. He inched forward to maybe help when his father's arm shot in front of him to hold him back. 

Scott didn't move for a moment before looking up at his dad. Harold was angry, angry enough that Scott took another step back because he knew that he, his weakness, his asthma, was a big part of the anger. Harold had punched the coach, but he was just as upset at his son. This was Scott's failure, and Scott knew it was his failure, and that burned. It burned because his dad wasn't going to talk to him the whole drive back. It burned because his mom was going to ask where they had been and his dad would explain while shooting looks of silent frustration at him and he'd know it was all his fault. This whole thing was his fault.

Harold looked down at his son, at this... weak, nervous human little child--

That stared back at him with Melissa's eyes. The wind went out of him then as he realized what he'd done, what this would mean, and what she would say when they got back home. Not only because he knew she'd see through this, but because as soon as the coach woke up, there was going to be hell to pay. He was just glad he hadn't clawed the man's face off and that wasn't much better than what he had done.

"Get in the car, Scott."

Scott looked from his father to the coach and at the other kids before looking back at his father. 

"Get in the CAR, Scott!"

Which was when he ran for the car as told, his father stalking behind him.

\-----

When she walked up behind him, scrubs on and make-up smeared, he knew. When she didn't touch him, didn't even acknowledge him, didn't look at him, he was sure. When she bent down beside the boy's hospital bed and stroked her son's hair out of his eyes, her own watching the rise and fall of his chest as if it was the most important thing in the world, he walked out.

Scott wasn't his son. Biologically, yes, of course, but he didn't care. The boy wasn't one of his, wasn't his kind. And Melissa... they'd been done a long time ago, the ink on the divorce papers well dried while they'd hashed out the custody arrangements. Scott wasn't going to be what he wanted, never would be, and there was nothing he could do about that. He couldn't fix his son. He couldn't fix his marriage.

He was divorced, Beacon Hills was too small of a town for him to find a decent job with his reputation, and he'd nearly killed a 14-year-old boy trying to get him to breathe on his own without that stupid inhaler. 

He walked out of the hospital and went home, stopping only to grab some boxes from the back of a supermarket. He packed up Scott's things first; thankfully, there wasn't much. A lot of it had stayed at the house with Melissa, so it was mostly clothes and school books. The necessities. They hadn't moved the rest yet because he'd only been with Harold for a month or so since their family had split. 

A month.

He put the boxes in a corner of the porch that wasn't too visible from the street, all of them marked with Scott's name, and left. Then he started packing his own things, which was almost as easy. It was easier than the phonecall to his lawyer, who couldn't understand why after everything, all the work and the fees and everything else, Harold was giving full custody to Melissa.

"Just get it done," and he hung up.

Some part of him wondered where the anger was, looked at the well-wrapped pictures and the neatly organized boxes of kitchenwares that he'd been working on and didn't know how it could have happened. Why he wasn't tearing the house apart.

But he wasn't angry. He couldn't be angry. 

He was just... empty. Alone. And there was really, truly, no one he could blame but himself.

\-----

It wasn't fair, it wasn't right; it wasn't the way things were done.

He did it anyway.

People died every day. People killed other people every day because there were things they wanted and things they needed and Harold needed this. There was no question. He couldn't live like this, couldn't be this anymore. There were things he needed to do and he couldn't do them as he was, without this. And, unfortunately, there was no other way to get it.

Back when he'd first left home, he'd thought that maybe he could do this peacefully. That was before he'd looked too deeply into his family, before he'd found out the truth. When he found the pack, he'd considered that maybe they would be able to help him, that he could get them to see the threat looming over all of them... but they were too docile. Practically domesticated. He might have been able to convince them to bite his wife and child, but he had more than one mission and both were equally important. 

That had led him here, to this, to the betrayal he had committed in the dark of the night on the new moon with an axe instead of his claws and his pack leader headless in bed. He knew what he was doing to the rest of the pack, to the rest of this family that'd taken him in. He knew that they'd wake up the next morning, bleary and unsure until they realized that they felt that way because their sense of pack was gone. He knew that someone was going to have to walk into this bedroom and see their uncle or their cousin or their brother, see the bloody mess that he'd left and the empty pale eyes lifeless in the face of someone they loved.

He knew he was destroying something, ruining other people's lives and maybe even making more people like him. People who were broken and alone and willing to do terrible things to fix it. The world didn't need any more people like him, but sometimes, sacrifices had to be made. And for this, Harold was willing to sacrifice quite a lot.

His honor.

His humanity.

Everything he'd ever been told by his mother about who and what he was.

But as he felt it flow through him, the strength thrumming through his muscles and the power of it changing him from lone wolf to alpha wolf, he was certain of one thing.

He didn't care. It was worth it. 

For his son and Melissa and the life that had always been out of reach. For his revenge on those who thought the past would remain buried. It would _all_ be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is about it for the past for a bit. At least, THIS part of the past.


End file.
